Rail~Volution Annual Conference

Rail~Volution is a conference for passionate practitioners – people from all perspectives who believe strongly in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability and greater communities. You should attend the conference if you:

Want to see your community adopt an innovative approach to transit and other alternative forms of transportation.

Work in the private sector and want to have meaningful interactions with potential new clients.

Work in the public sector and want to learn best practices along with colleagues from around the U.S. and beyond.

Want to have a stronger voice in how your community plans for future growth.

Attending Rail~Volution is like being in the midst of a living, breathing laboratory where the best new ideas from around the country are introduced, tossed around with great fervor, researched and tested thoroughly, and then shared among like-minded colleagues. Expect to attend hands-on workshops that feature case studies and how-to discussions, symposia that provide in-depth explorations of issues facing every community, and inspiring plenary sessions that showcase some of the best livability minds in the country and the world. Attend Rail~Volution and you are guaranteed to return home with a palette of new ideas and a toolbox of new strategies for making your community more livable.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Those looking for hope in this era of transit service cuts took heart from the words of William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), at the Rail~volution conference yesterday. In his keynote speech, he Millar reasons to hope for a better future — despite the fact that 84 percent of APTA members […]

Jeff is back from Rail~volution with all the highlights from the sessions he skipped because he was deep in conversation in the hallways. Isn’t that what conferences are for? We discuss what we do and don’t get out of these big meetings. We also get into CityLab‘s examination of the gap between public support for […]

Streetfilms was out in Portland at this year’s Rail~Volution conference, putting our finger on the pulse of the sustainable transportation world. We spoke to a healthy dose of this year’s attendees, including advocates, bloggers, planners, transit industry reps and members of transportation agencies across the country. Among those we heard from was Congressman Earl Blumenauer, […]

Much of the talk on the Streetsblog Network in the past few days, perhaps prompted by the recently concluded Congress for the New Urbanism conference, is about transit-oriented development. The real estate crisis, it seems, may finally be pushing the issue into the mainstream. Photo of housing near a new light rail line by Light […]

Perhaps it goes without saying, but when you’re advocating for something, it’s not enough to make it happen – it has to succeed. If you get what you want and it’s a miserable failure, you’ve made matters far worse for your cause. That’s the quandary some high speed rail advocates find themselves in now. Some […]

At Rail~Volution yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) — also known as the godfather of the “rail~volution” — said even he wouldn’t raise the gas tax right now. “We should make some adjustments to a gas tax that hasn’t increased since 1993,” Blumenauer said. “Half the people think the gas tax goes up every year.” He […]